Library Resources to Support Distance Learners
Are you teaching an online course? Do you wonder how your students can make use of the University of Delaware’s library resources? Are you curious about streaming media resources that could be used to illustrate a concept or teach an idea in an online setting? Do you have questions about the most copyright-conscious means of sharing book chapters, articles, video, or online documents with your students through Canvas or Sakai? The University of Delaware Library has several resources for faculty teaching fully online classes, hybrid classes, or classes which make heavy use of Canvas or Sakai for research sharing.
Bookmark the Library’s Services for Online Distance Learning page. (https://library.udel.edu/about/distancelearning/) This page provides an overview of services for online and distance learners including delivery services, electronic course reserves, instruction and research support. Included on this page is a link to the Library’s Media LibGuide (http://guides.lib.udel.edu/media). This guide showcases streaming media databases to which the Library subscribes, containing over 55,000 titles that can be accessed at a distance and incorporated into your syllabi. It also contains recommendations for freely-available streaming media resources which can be incorporated into a variety of courses.
Try using permalinks. Also included is a new resource for the creation of persistent links (“permalinks”) to licensed online content. A permalink is a web address that will reliably point to a specific information source such as an article, video, database, or an eBook. Most research databases include a permalink in the article or eBook record. For an off-campus student to access the licensed resource that the permalink points to, a proxy statement which will allow the student to authenticate into the library’s subscriptions must be added to the permalink. The library has created an EZProxy permalink generator to assist with this step: http://guides.lib.udel.edu/permalinks
Why use a permalink instead of uploading the full PDF to your course site? Permalinks help the library keep track of which journals are being used. Also, you may be in violation of copyright law or license restrictions if you post content to your course site without appropriate authorization or permission. Simply linking directly to the content using a permalink is the preferred option. The library maintains a helpful guide to copyright and fair use questions: http://guides.lib.udel.edu/copyright
For questions about accessing library materials for your online course, please contact the Library’s Online Access group (mailto:OnlineAccess@hawkins.lib.udel.edu) or your subject liaison (https://library.udel.edu/librarians/subjectlibrarians/).
